Skull 04

Wow, I have a newfound respect for mural artists! I know this isn’t a “large” painting (not even for me), but it’s much easier for me to take a large object or scene and paint it small than the other way around! Keeping the proportions correct while painting it so much larger was quite difficult for me (and I don’t think I quite succeeded, even though I do like the end result!). It might even be obvious in the timelapse when I’m checking proportions. I imagine painting with very large brushes or spray paint might make this a little easier, I didn’t exactly use a “small” brush for most of this either. However, I do like the flow of color from purples to blues, and I love the eyeball!

I’ve wanted to paint a skull with real eyes for a while. I don’t remember if I was inspired by some video game or a movie, but I’m sure I’ve seen it in a few different places and I love the spooky look! I wasn’t exactly sure how to make the inner part of the eye look like something between skin and bone. I didn’t just want a loose eyeball (though that sounds like a good spooky idea as well), and I wanted it to be at least somewhat anatomically correct. If it were anatomically correct, however, it would be large, pushed forward, and generally in the center of the socket, but I wanted the bone of the socket to look almost like the folded skin around the eyes, and that the eyes were sunken in. I went back and forth between looking at Skully (my replica skull) – and putting various objects in Skully’s sockets to test out my ideas – and reference photos to try to get the look the way I wanted, but I didn’t want too much definition in those darker areas either (with the exception of the eye itself). I’m still not sure if I made the right decision to not show the other eye. I started painting it, then I didn’t like the placement, then I tried a different place (I’m not sure I’ll show this in the timelapse) … and I just didn’t like it as much as when you could see one eye and the other was just assumed to be in darkness, so I went back to that. What do you think?

Oh, and if you’re a mural artist, please let me know some useful tips when painting large! I’d love to know how to make it feel more natural and prevent less reworking when I try to paint “large” again.

Spooky Film: Today’s spooky film of the day is “Evil Dead II” because this skull reminds me of those films – it probably reminds me more of the skeletons in “Army of Darkness” but I liked “Evil Dead II” the best. I love the silly horror, the spooky horror, and the psychological horror (if you watched this one first, you might think he’s actually insane until other people join him). I love the scene where everything in the room is laughing with him – whenever I see a deer head on a wall I will think it’s taunting me or laughing at me hehehe 😀